


By the Letter (of the law)

by Asuka Kureru (Askerian)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Alternate Universe - Derse/Prospit Royalty, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Armor Kink, Ficlet, Intercrural Sex, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Oral Sex, Wedding Night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-07
Updated: 2014-06-08
Packaged: 2017-12-28 17:23:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/994581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askerian/pseuds/Asuka%20Kureru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"No, but answer me this, do you <i>want</i> to invalidate this whole farce of a legal and religious joining of blah-di-fucking-blah? Because I have <i>looked</i> at your laws and if we don't consummate the union it's <i>not valid!</i>"<br/>--<br/>Anonymous asked: Davekat. Arranged marriage! The first time they are alone together is on their wedding night.<br/>--<br/>Now with actual sex, woo! Also several pages of Karkat and Dave being the dorkiest knights ever knighted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is complete, i don't know how the heck they arrived there and i don't know where they're going from there and i'm not super interested in figuring out an epic plot for it.
> 
> edit: apparently i'm interested in the fricking though. >__>;

"No, but answer me this, do you _want_ to invalidate this whole farce of a legal and religious joining of blah-di-fucking-blah? Because I have _looked_ at your laws and if we don't _consummate_ the union it's _not valid!_ "

Karkat loomed over his brand-new 'husband', teeth bared -- which might have been more intimidating if he hadn't been fighting ineffectually with the fiddly wedding shirt's too-precious-to-destroy buttons for the last five minutes. (It wasn't that his hands were shaking and he needed to keep them busy, of course not.)

"And I have it from an actual lawyer that this means we _do,_ actually, ' _have to fuck it out_ ', because the law doesn't care about irrelevant asides and special cases like _reproductive incompatibility!_ "

Karkat's 'husband' gave a slow blink from the bed, where he lay stretched out on his side, still fully dressed and with his boots on. The coverlet was dusty now but who gave a fuck, Karkat sure as hell didn't, he was pretty sure he wanted to slap his feet off there for pretty much the same reason he wanted to slap him across the face, and the boots were just a convenient excuse he was ready to own up for. At least to himself. Privately.

" _Dude_."

To Dave Strider- _Vantas_ himself, Karkat would not even admit a polar night felt slightly chilly. The -- just, the _nerve_ of him, the sheer "meh, who the hell even cares" exuding from his every pore--

"I don't know about you but for months I've been buried in wedding preparation shit--"

"Oh wow, no, I have no idea what that's like!"

"--shit massive enough to have come out of a hundred bulls, like, mammoth sized bulls. I've slept like five--" He lifted his hand, fingers open wide like Karkat needed the high number illustrated, "hours this whole last week. We have a whole and entire night where by tradition no one's gonna bother us until it's time to shower us in croissants and bacon and then leave us alone the rest of the next morning." He dropped his head on the pillow pointedly, hands tucked behind his neck. "I don't care what you do, but I'm sleeping."

Karkat hissed under his breath, and yanked his undershirt open. Buttons plinked off under the concupiscent platform. He turned to face his husband, letting the shirt fall open, daring him to -- to say anything, say the wrong thing, make the wrong face, _not make any face_ \--

Dave's mouth flattened in a line Karkat couldn't interpret. "Congrats on the most sensual strip-tease I was ever on the receiving end of," he drawled.

Karkat bristled, hesitated on the verge of tackling him -- he knew it wasn't how it was supposed to go between them, wasn't how they'd negotiated it through ambassadors and go-betweens, but kismeses were concupiscent enough for human wedding vows to fit and better than nothing, were they? (Better than empty contractual sex.) Better than no actual binding sex. But then his 'husband' sat up and sighed, shoulders sagging with unfeigned tiredness.

"You're as into me as a snipped cat is into a cactus, dude."

Karkat flinched, glanced away.

"Which granted is weird as fuck but leave the Strider magic some time to operate, yeah? People will only know that we took, like, two days or, or even a _week_ to frick if we _tell them_."

Fuck shame; Karkat made himself look at him again, rolled his eyes pointedly. "Or they sniff it off us, and they happen to be law-obsessed! You've _met_ my best woman, haven't you?"

"... Well then we'll say we did it under the shower. Tadah, all incriminating evidence went down the drain, it's like magic."

He raked a hand through his smooth, flat hair, pushing it backward. Karkat fisted his hands, wanting to tangle it worse, tangle it so bad it'd stop falling back to those perfect, fake-looking locks.

"There is absolutely no way this can go wrong," he retorted, cynical, though he wanted -- Terezi wouldn't examine their bathroom and he knew it; hell, even if she figured it out, he knew she wouldn't tell, he knew she would sit on her principles and cover for him. It was just an excuse, because if he let himself accept an out his fucking _hubbie_ offered so graciously then he'd never --

"No yeah actually there _is_ no way, because the worst that could happen is they're suspicious but can't prove jack shit. But point is I am so tired a whole brothel's worth of pros couldn't suck my dick hard right now, I mean not saying that you're not cute -- I mean, you've got a nice ass and all and all I just -- this is meant to illustrate how freakily exhausted I am, okay, it's not a judgment on your hotness meter or like, my usual level of performance, I can perform fine, hell, _great,_ I just."

His weird pale skin had gone wine-dark, his impassible face awkward with tension. Oh.

"Like. Not today."

The tangle of Karkat's rage and nerves unwound all at once.

"You're a virgin, aren't you."

Dave pretended to look straight at him, but Karkat's eyes were better than his in candlelight and it was easy to see them skidding away. "Wow, what's with those aspersions, no, seriously, fuck you."

"Tomorrow," Karkat promised around a crooked smile, and made himself sit on the mattress beside his husband to pull off his boots and kick off his pants.


	2. Chapter 2

"And this," Karkat mused in the direction of his husband, "is why I bothered with the gauntlets today."

The stall's half-door rattled under a heavy kick. Dave glowered at Karkat from his place, back against the wall. Karkat glanced down at his hand. No blood. Good. He could keep being an asshole without remorse.

He picked up the bacon roll Dave had dropped, reached out an armored hand, palm up, His mount snorted against his fingers, and snapped his fangs closed around the meat.

"How come he didn't even try it with you," Dave muttered as he peered cautiously over Karkat's shoulder. Karkat tried not to pay any mind to the tense-wary-interested tingles making their way down his neck.

"You have no idea how many time he tried to bite my armor before he figured out it didn't work." A thoughtful pause, as he remembered dented metal with painful clarity. "Much." He flicked Dave a side-glance. "Still want to go riding?"

"Damn it, yes I do." Dave's white-gold head nodded sharply at the stable door. Outside friends from both courts were still waiting, probably, to assault them with fascinating pastimes such as gossip and wine-drinking.

Karkat had downed enough alcohol on his wedding day to last him a lifetime; remedies could only go so far, he was pretty sure he would be hungover for the next three days at best.

(Also one of their closest, nosiest friends was bound to ask how the wedding night had gone. Which... yeah. No.)

"Your monster was so well-behaved during the procession, too, what happened?"

Karkat snorted, watched Slick turn over in his stall, long tail slithering against the wall, long neck bowed to snuffle at the straw. Drakes usually nested on sand, preferably kept hot with coals, or via being built over some kind of underground kiln or oven. It was warm enough in summer that he would be fine without, but Karkat was glad that drakes did not spit fire like their bigger cousins.

"I was in armor, he thought we were going to war." He rolled his eyes, turned a bit to quirk a smile at Dave -- a small, hesitant one. "So now he's pissed off because he didn't get to maul anyone yesterday after all."

Dave let out an almost silent chuckle.

"C'mon, let's go see Crow."

Karkat fell into step with him, eyebrows furrowed in doubt. "Crow?"

"Yeah, see, you _totally_ want to say hi to my own beloved war mount. Because if you didn't we couldn't tell the guys that nope, we're not done, sorry, we'll join you guys later maybe."

Karkat gave a slow blink, and followed him out into the courtyard. "You're talking about the hippogriff, right. You fucking asshole, you named your hippogriff Crow. She's fucking _orange_." He waved from afar at Terezi and his brother, still turned toward Dave with all the appearances of involved, private conversation. "I totally want to meet a hippogriff while smelling of bacon I don't have anymore, this is a smart idea, you should have been your Empresses' advisor instead of your genetic relations, I don't get how Peixes and Peixes ever passed you over."

Dave's mouth was pinched and he was just too impassible to mean it, Karkat was _sure_ he was laughing inside.

They ducked to safety inside a fuller stable; apparently Dave's own mount didn't think horses were food, because he was seeing them everywhere, and they seemed pretty placid. An oliveblood girl was mucking one of the stalls; Dave nodded at her.

"Sir Dave, hi!" she sang from the bottom of the stall. "Congratulations!"

Karkat wondered if Dave was yet grown weary of being congratulated, like sitting there repeating a couple of lines while priests waved incense and things at them was some kind of feat that they should be especially proud of.

"Yeah, yeah, thanks. Hey, Nep, any of these need to be walked? Not any of the twitchy ones, though. Because I feel a powerful need to take my husbando on a good long hard ride ifyougetwhatImean but I'd also like him being able to close his legs at the end of the day."

Karkat spluttered, almost punched Dave in the arm and then remembered he was wearing his gauntlets. " _What are you telling her?!_ "

"Shh, Nepeta doesn't gossip. All gossip comes to her and then never comes out again. Unless you're her favorite Knight, right?" He leaned on the stable door and wagged his eyebrows. Karkat glared.

The girl was snorfling in her hand. "It depends! What'll you give me?"

Dave pouted at her. Karkat stomped past the two of them down the row of stables to look at the horses, which he did not care about, and the couple of hippogriffs there at the end with their vicious raptor beaks and their suspiciously bristled crests.

He did not move any closer to the birds. They were war steeds, no doubt it'd be as stupid as going to Slick and climbing on like he was a plow horse. He supposed the lines of their skulls were elegant enough. At the end of the row there was a skyhorse, lusus-white. Probably it only remained stabled because it felt like it, because the doors didn't go all the way up.

"Heylo, my tenderest half, you joining me on my escape or should I tell your bro Kankri to keep you--"

"I'm coming, Christ on a flying pig!"

"--company. Haha. Okay, you get Snort. He's the gelding with the forehead star. And mine's Stinky. Their names are actually like twenty syllables long and with more 'of the' than I have to my name, but, you know."

Karkat wasn't too sure what he felt to be called those pet names. Dave didn't mean them one bit, naturally, but they slipped off his tongue with amazingly casual regularity.

He rolled his eyes, approached his designated mount. The girl was finishing saddling it. "I know what a stable name is, do you think Slick's name is actually Slick? When he hatched he chowed through three of his nestmates and then we couldn't pick him up from how gross and slippery he was."

Dave stared at him long enough for Karkat to start squirming. "Snort is... just... called Snort... because he snorts."

"Sorry for having the better story," Karkat grumbled, and stuck his gauntlet in his belt so he could pet the horse's nose.

"The better story? Wow, that sure sounded like a challenge to me, what do you think, Nep, it was a challenge, right."

"It was _completely_ a challenge," she confirmed staunchly as she finished cinching the saddle.

"My poor honey," Dave said sadly, "I am going to verbally annihilate your delusions."

When Karkat led his horse out of the stable he made sure to lead it into Dave, so he had to dodge into a yet unmucked stall to avoid being flattened.

\--

Dave went silent the second they left the road and turned into the woods. The horses were sedate and pretty much led themselves; Karkat didn't have to direct his own hardly at all, it was content enough to trail after Dave's horse, and Dave's horse seemed to know where they were going just fine on her own.

After the months and weeks of meetings -- strategy and decoration, the people helping him into his ceremonial armor, the people making him learn his vows by heart, the protocol lessons, the _dance_ lessons, after his friends everywhere, worried and regretful and telling him again and again how sorry they were that this was necessary--

After the full-to-bursting cathedral with its eldritch flames and the low rumble of the crowd that resonated like whispers in his ear...

It was green everywhere and there was sunlight enough to make things light and happy, but under the shade of the trees his eyes could rest. There were a couple of faraway birds and there were the horses placidly rocking them along and there was only Dave and no one else, not for miles.

For the first time in a year he felt like he could breathe.

\--

The path went in a wide circle around the castle; he watched the highest towers circle the horizon between the trees during the next hour as the woods went up and down and receded sometimes before hardy grass and riots of small flowers, smatterings of torn rocks. It was nothing like the gentle waves of the Prospitian landscape but there was a savage beauty to the land around here, to the wind-twisted trees.

He couldn't feel his ass. Stupid unfamiliar saddle.

"Dave," he called, voice coming out low and quiet without conscious input. Maybe he didn't want to disturb the wild animals. "Let's take a break."

"Saddle-sore? A big tough manly knight like you?"

Karkat snorted, tugged on the reins to stop his horse; it snorted at him, shook its head, dancing to the side in wholly unfamiliar ways. It was less dangerous than a drake, but at least he _knew_ drakes. "You remember how your sister laughed at the thought of us going riding right after our wedding night?"

Dave reined his horse in, scowled at him. "Okay, I--"

"Do you really want me to walk back bowlegged, is what I'm asking."

"I'd look pretty studly," Dave replied, but in a mildly pouty tone which told Karkat well enough how acutely aware he was of the weapon in Karkat's hands.

"Do you realize how I would repay you for that," Karkat asked placidly.

"Okay, _okay,_ we're stopping, here, there's a stream nearby, the horses can drink and it'll even be pretty."

Karkat swallowed a smile; when Snort shouldered past Dave's mare on its way down the steep path he leaned in and whispered, "Virgin," and snickered when Dave shoved at him.

"The Emissary as my witness, you are _evil_. What cruel fate tied me to this heartless monster, I'm asking you."

"It's karma, compliments of the universe for being such a massive douche," Karkat replied, and slid off his horse before it could pitch him into the stream. He tied the reins to the saddle so it wouldn't walk on them and break its fool leg, and climbed back on the bank, sat on the grass.

It was a nice place, Dave had been right. Secret and shadowy, bare shreds of rock climbed by red-leafed vine. There were bushes and the slope to hide them from the path, should anyone wander their way.

Dave sat at his side, controlled and oddly graceful, and for a second Karkat felt self-conscious of his own potato sack impression.

"The horses won't run off, right? We don't need to tie them up?"

Dave shrugged. "They're better trained than that, and there's nothing left to run from in the woods, not so close to the castle. Take all the time your poor abused derriere need."

"Hmm." Karkat toppled onto his back, watched the sky through dancing leaves. It always was windy in the heart of Derse, but today the wind was mild, almost playful. He could like it.

It was strange how trusting he felt around Dave, how easily he relaxed. Arranged matespritship -- no feelings yet, maybe ever, but the mutually beneficial thing was nice.

So was the trust, developed after a single night, that Dave wasn't the kind of man to ever abuse his access to Karkat's defenseless body.

Well, he might still wake up to a face full of pillow or pastry or housecats, but he was oddly certain this was as far as it would ever get.

"You know, it isn't like we don't have the notion of unions of convenience, but with trolls we usually go more for arranged moirallegiances," he mused.

"Yeah, uh, considering how I do not need my face patted obsessively and I don't have the wrist control not to leave bruises and broken noses, that would _not_ have been a great idea. By which I mean arranged pale hookups sound even more bizarre than arranged marriage where you at least get to frick."

Karkat sat up, eyes narrowed, and put his palm right between Dave's eyes. He patted soft and precise, reddening a little for how kinky it was, even for a joke.

"There. You're contaminated with pale cooties. With this diamond ring I thee wed--"

"Ooooh no you fucking don't," Dave replied, and grabbed his wrist and rolled on top of him.

He had obviously not considered that strategy properly. Karkat didn't bother fighting (not yet), just stared at him with an eyebrow arched cynically as their bodies made full still-clothed contact. (The edge of Dave's thigh-high boots was digging into the inside of his own.)

"I had not considered this properly," Dave mused after a handful of seconds of staring and breathing each other's air.

"You really hadn't," Karkat replied, and rolled them over to get on top.

The slope being what it was, he felt he should not have been surprised when they rolled downhill for a short heart-stopping instant and his bracing foot ended up in the mud.

"Argh, shit." Dave squirmed off him, pushed himself uphill, offered his hand.

Karkat let him help drag him up where the ground was flatter, and then he pushed him down and tried to pin him again so he could rub a handful of grass into his dumb pale hair.

"Do not," Dave was saying as he grabbed at his wrists and tried to lever him off, "mess up the hair, do not put grass anywhere near the hair, do not make the hair green that is a travesty, no flowers, leaves, crickets or other vegetation, no slugs, we are -- ngh -- not five -- I will tie you belly down across your saddle and make your horse _gallop,_ I will _lose you in the woods--"_

Smirking down at him, Karkat used his greater mass (all muscles) to slowly force his hand down.

He was two inches from the field of ridiculous white gold when he relaxed his own fingers for some reason he didn't understand and dropped his handful of grass, and then his fingers were sliding over and through silky locks, so fine.

"This is not hair," he complained, in a whisper for some reason. "You grafted spider silk to your cranium like the vain strutting vagina-gremlin that you are. This is nothing like hair. How much do you even spend on dyes, it's ludicrous."

"Is this where I offer to show you that the carpet matches the drapes," Dave whispered sensuously in his ear.

His arm slid around Karkat's neck to pull him the rest of the way down and then they were kissing -- their first kiss not in front of an audience, for show, and it figured Karkat would laugh and mess it up.

Dave snickered in his mouth, their lips didn't fit properly anymore; Karkat nuzzled blindly at his face, elbows planted in the earth over Dave's shoulders, both hands cradling his skull. Damn but he did like the feel of his hair. He almost twitched away in embarrassment when Dave's hands rose to touch his own, but then Dave was snorting at himself and biting down on his leather glove to pull it off. He spat the glove on his own chest and then his hand was going straight for Karkat's horn.

"Ffff -- you kinky little shit. Aren't you sure this isn't too advanced for you?"

"It's not really kinky," Dave countered, but doubtful enough that Karkat could tell he believed him. He smirked against his mouth, and kissed him again.

"It's _depraved._ Just kidding, you could do it in public and people would just giggle and think we're cute. Rub the bases, the skin around the -- mmh, yes, here."

He purred against the thin skin of his neck, against the veins visible right through. Dave's other hand was tugging on his shirt laces, fingers dipping in to tease his stomach and then tugging a bit too hard to pull the shirt tails free from his belt. He wasn't too shy to turn his hand and press the flat of his palm to Karkat's stomach, fingers teasing at his belly, over the edge of his pants.

Karkat pressed a thigh high between Dave's thighs and kissed openmouthed at his soft, tender neck.

"When you think -- nnh -- we've got a full royal suite, with like -- gold coverlets and velvet pillows and shit -- and the way this is going I am totally going to lose my maidenhood while rocks try to embrace my spine and scratchy shit gets in my--"

"If you get my shirt off, you get to lay on it," Karkat whispered in his ear. Dave made an inelegant snorting sound.

"Blackmail," he managed to say, and then they were busy with other things, with Karkat's hand cradling Dave's nape to hold up his head as Dave stared between their bodies, watched Karkat's body over his, with Dave's fingers on his horn, tightening and tugging without thought, dragging a crackle of instinctive noise out of Karkat's throat.

Between the two of them they eventually managed to wrangle Karkat's long belt off, though he growled when he had to let go of Dave and sit up across his hips to finish taking off his shirt. He was still wearing one of the gauntlets; he yanked it off, and arched an eyebrow at the involuntary noise coming out of Dave's throat. Definitely a protest.

Dave met his eyes and started reddening, turned his head and glared stubbornly into the distance. Karkat let the shirt fall off, and then put the gauntlet back on, trailed its metal knuckles down Dave's side. Dave jumped, hips rolling for a second before he mastered himself.

He'd gone red as the length of cloth joining their wrists, only yesterday, red as Karkat's wedding shirt, as the curlicues on Dave's silvery parade armor.

Karkat used his other, still-bare hand to undo the laces on Dave's shirt and spread it open, and then he glided cold metal all the way down to his belly.

Dave hissed between his teeth, hands clenching on Karkat's thighs. "Okay. _Okay,_ this is officially a thing. If you _ever_ laugh I'll --"

His words died in his mouth and he looked up at karkat, all flustered and lost, no threat at hand. Karkat leaned in to kiss his lips, all soft and careful.

"I really fucking like your hair," he said against Dave's mouth.

"Not the same thing--"

" _Exactly_ the same thing," he forced himself to say. "You have no idea where I want to feel it. Do I have to detail."

"Uh." Dave stared up at him, flushed deep, lips parted like he'd forgotten to check his expression and shit, that was -- shit. He hadn't been sure he could bring himself to actively desire his husband, yesterday, apart from in purely aesthetic ways, but.

Fuck. Yes. This man, he wanted him.

"Wow that is, uh. Kinky." Dave licked his dry lips. "I guess there _is_ a stream, even though it's cold as fuck and, and what if it stains, pink and green hair, what is my life, haha--"

Karkat cupped his crotch through his pants, set his palm nice and firm against his shaft, and closed armored fingers around his balls.

"Shh." He bumped the tips of their noses together, smiled a little secret smile. "It's your deflowering, you get the kink. We'll get to my things later."

He could feel heat radiating off Dave's face without touching it. He'd closed his eyes. "Yeah, okay."

In the months before their wedding Karkat had been preparing himself to embarrassing private negotiations about everything in their life, girded his loins to bring up all those gross or weird, unspeakably important little details and forging unsatisfying compromises, and it came so easy. It seemed like cheating.

He shuffled his weight off Dave, went up on his knees to battle his pants. Dave groaned, grabbed at Karkat's thigh and then blinked, "Oh." It was inelegant and silly and Karkat didn't want to laugh when Dave spread both of their shirts fussily on the ground, he wanted to caress him all over, bury his face between his thighs.

His boots, knee-high, tugged free easily, and then his pants and underpants slipped off like magic and he was entirely bare on the grass, sheath barely managing to still contain his bulge. Dave was...

"Pff."

"Shut up, oh my Lord Fluthlu, just--"

Karkat moved between Dave's legs and started pulling at his boots, a wide, white grin on his face as he watched Dave's erection bob around with each tug, and his pants bunched down at mid-thigh where his riding boots stopped.

"You know -- not today but some other day," he said as he threw the first boot off to join his own, "you might also want to put the boots back on." A cheerful leer -- he hadn't even known his face _could_ do that. "Nothing but the boots, I mean."

Dave pressed both hands over his eyes. "Oh my Christ-fucking dark saints and all their noodly appendages. Do you _want_ me to jizz myself?!"

Karkat snickered against his chest even as he kissed the keel of his ribs. "Viiirgin... Heh, at this rate we'll end up having sex in nothing but armor."

"Are you kidding me, wearing mine without pants? It'd pinch little Dave right -- hff -- off."

Dave toppled on his back; Karkat almost toppled downslope, the last boot in hand. He threw it over the rest and crawled over Dave, stretched out on his back and watching him with his pink cheeks, his darkened eyes.

They kissed again, bodies pressed together. All that bare skin was intoxicating; the breeze caressed where their own hands and bodies didn't. It would have been easy to rock together to orgasm, huddled as close as they could.

He wanted it better than that. He sat up between Dave's thighs, caressing the slope of them as it rose to bracket his hips, one hand bare and one armored. He could feel Dave's attention snap to that one, could see the shivers, the muscles bulging over his stomach, in his thighs as he clenched them around Karkat's waist.

Karkat picked up his other gauntlet and pulled it on with his teeth, slow and thorough. He tested the fit, curling and uncurling his fingers; Dave groaned, knees digging tight into Karkat's waist.

He touched him then, drew designs on his skin and drew the bones and the veins he could see underneath, the tender underneath of his arm and each one of his ribs; he followed cold steel with his mouth, his teeth.

Quiet breaths became choked-up moans, became gasps, tiny whimpers, became all ten of Dave's fingers clenched tight on Karkat's knees and his spine arching, his belly rising to meet Karkat's hands and Karkat's name in his mouth -- just that, just his name and noises without syllables. Karkat shuffled backwards on his knees to kiss his way down Dave's belly, gauntleted hands closed firm on his narrow hips, keeping him prisoner.

"Oh fuck, fuck, please, Karkat, Karkatkarkat _karkat_ \--"

His hands were in Karkat's hair now, fisted around his hair, not even going for the horns like another troll would have, and each tug made him groan against Dave's skin. He smoothed steel-shelled fingers up the back of Dave's thighs, guided them up as he slid his body underneath. Dave's legs thrown over his shoulders, he pressed his mouth to his taint, felt heels drumming mindlessly on his back.

He kissed his way up, to the side, his inner thighs, every square inch of that ridiculous, delicate sac of his, drawn tight against his shaft, he used cold metal fingers to straddle his erection right behind the head, keep it pinned to white-blond curls as he explored it from the root up.

Each yank on his hair sent a jolt of hot, clenching desire down to his nook; but eventually he did make his way up and take him in his mouth. Dave started patting his head frantically, babbling thanks spilling from his lips, body trembling with desperate tension as he tried to keep from fucking Karkat's mouth.

His hands were so stupidly clumsy in Karkat's hair as he tried to smooth it down, so awkwardly tender, a purr started to build in Karkat's throat. He didn't try to stop it. He swallowed more of Dave's oddly stiff shaft and purred all around him, eyes closed. His matesprit. His husband.

Dave came with a cry he couldn't smother, right at the back of Karkat's mouth, and it must have been pity because Karkat let him finish and slump back down boneless on the ground before he pulled his mouth off his still-stiff dick and coughed.

When Dave patted blindly at his arms Karkat crawled up his body and cuddled up, and tried to think counting thoughts. It did not keep his bulge still.

"--I just got goosed by your willy."

"I'd need to flip you around for it to be goosing," Karkat grouched, and nuzzled at his jaw. He kind of wanted a kiss, but he wasn't sure how reasonable it was to ask that with a mouth full of genetic material.

Dave chuckled tiredly in his hair and kissed his temple. "Well, uh. You could... do that, I guess. I mean, for it to be the complete deflowering. The entire devirginization. The full--"

"Shut. Up. _I will bite_." Karkat nipped at his collarbone, tried not to rut against his belly. Dave's legs were still wrapped around his thighs, and it was _not_ helping. "Penetration isn't even necessary anyway under the definitions used in our vows, so." Dave blinked mutely at him. "I'm not saying I never want to bugger you but with how nervous you sound this is not arousing."

Good thing everything else was doing a good job of keeping him aroused.

"Well, it's -- you know. Traditional." Dave bit his lip, darkened red eyes barred through with lowered silver lashes. "And I -- it's not fair if I get to be inside you and you don't, um, like, what if I suck at blowjobs, like suck in a bad way, or your crotch anaconda chokes the life out of me and then you never get to -- um, yeah. Not really fair, and besides, and besides maybe I want it--"

Maybe he did want it, and maybe he was nervous as hell about it without arousal to cover it up, and maybe they were going to have their whole life to work up to it and Karkat was pretty sure it wouldn't take that long.

"I've got nothing on me to make it easier, dearheart," Karkat apologized softly, and kissed the underside of his jaw.

He sat up, fingers gliding a last time along Dave's sides before he took the gauntlets off, one by one, Dave's eyes on his hands every second of the process. He took one of Karkat's hands when it was free, warm and dry against Karkat's sweaty hand, and Karkat guided his thigh up and dropped a kiss against the inside of his knee.

Dave didn't even ask him what he was doing as he pushed his legs up, held them against Dave's chest; he could probably penetrate him and Dave would just grunt and grit his teeth.

He pressed his hips against the back of Dave's thighs and let his bulge push and squirm itself a way between his thighs, solid with muscle, only softer, squishier where they met his body. He rocked a little, head bowed, trying not to come so fast. Dave's thighs were warm, and when the tip of his bulge found his sac he groaned and squeezed all around him, Karkat's bulge tried to lash and could barely move, deliciously caught.

"What -- should I -- how do I help--"

Karkat had to swallow twice before he could speak. "Squeeze -- yes, here -- release -- again, yes, fuck, that's how -- inside, how a nook would --"

His own was going crazy, clamping down on nothing and he almost wished Dave's arms were somehow long enough to get fingers inside him ,at least. He would plan the logistics better next time, but oh, oh fuck, those ticklish white curls on the end of his bulge, so intense it felt almost like pain.

It didn't take him too long before he caught up, coming in thick, hot jets between Dave's thighs, on his belly.

He was glad that Dave seemed to be a cuddler, or at least was willing to indulge him, because if there was something better than lying in someone's arms after you made sweaty hot love to them he wasn't sure what it was.

"Dude, you're clicking, that's so weird."

Karkat blindly nipped at the neck under his nose. Dave grunted. His hand didn't stop petting Karkat's head, though. "Like you can talk, you _mewl_. I human-married a meowbeast. Do meowbeasts even fucking marry, I don't think so. Travesty."

"Bestiality."

"Mmm," Karkat concluded, an appreciative moan that had Dave laugh through a surprised cough.

They cuddled a little while longer. When they weren't moving, though, the constant breeze on their sweaty bodies made things uncomfortably cool. Karkat still would have kept cuddling, stubborn to the end, if Dave didn't start shivering.

"Alright, I need to clean up, c'mon, Karkat."

With a sigh, Karkat sat up. Huh, wow. Translucent red material on pale human skin made for an... interesting contrast.

"Yeah, your handiwork is magnificent, I am an artist's canvas. Troll Spunk By Mountain Stream."

Karkat shoved Dave a little, rolling his eyes, and got up, holding up his hand to help without thought. He had a bare half-second to feel self-conscious, and then Dave took it, allowed him to pull him up. "Next time you can swallow my load, if you'd rather. When you say mountain stream...?"

Dave nodded sadly, white gold hair tumbling in messy locks across his eye in a way that made Karkat want to ruffle it even worse. "It's going to be as frozen as our dread Lord Oglogoth's tentadicks. Woohoo."

"Huh. Oh well." It'd wake them up. They did need to get home.

He started walking toward the stream, bare feet in the scraggly, prickly grass, Dave's hand in his.

"Hey, Dave?"

Dave gave his hand a little squeeze. Karkat's lips quirked up helplessly.

"Hmm?"

"You see our horses anywhere?"

"... Mother _fuck_."

They stared at each other blankly for a handful of seconds, and then Karkat nodded philosophically -- what getting laid did to his brain chemistry, wow -- and said "you know what, clean and dressed first, panic second."

Dave gave himself the hiccups giggling, and not even the stream's cold water stopped him. In the end Karkat gave up and joined him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous said: Dorky Knights, a couple (two??) months later, trying to make out during some free time but their mounts won't leave them alone. Bad Crow.

The good thing about being a knight lawfully wedded to another knight is that he's always got a partner. Especially because of the political angle to being a Dersite and a Prospitian, or a troll and a human -- they get lots of peacekeeping assignments, not to the level of leading war parties but sort of pre-diplomacy. Diplomacy with teeth. Flattening the ground for the real diplomacy parties -- and sometimes it turns out the problem can be resolved with a good talking-to, no need to bring in his hell-sister and turn everyone inside out.

Metaphorically speaking. Most of the time. But anyway.

The good thing, yes, is that Dave always travels with a partner. He's not sure if they knew when they settled on Karkat as his match that karkat could and would actually follow him and not hinder him any -- complete him in some ways, even -- but it's a pretty good partnership.

Only they have a ton of work, and they're always on the move from one keep to the next, and oftentimes they're even escorting travelers, or a bunch of guards, or thieves that need delivered to the proper authorities, which means finding ten minutes to maintain the wedding vows part of their partnership gets pretty difficult.

Especially the vows concerning their bedroom activities. Dave is pretty salty about those.

So here they are, just delivered a bunch of nuns to their dark and tentacley convent and who could blame them if they sneak each other a look and welp, it's _surely_ going to rain, let's stop for the night early.

Of course Karkat insists to start the fire and see to their mounts first -- the pack horses to one side with their grain, Crow and Slick to the other side lest they forget the horses aren't their feed.

Not that Dave thinks Crow would forget. She's been raised with horses; she thinks she's one. Well, she's two fourth of one, so she's not really wrong. Slick is another matter, but Crow can handle him for the five minutes it -- mnh -- five minutes it'll take for Dave to take off Karkat's chain mail, slide his hands under his tunic, hello there, what do we have...

He's sure it's only five minutes. They're just very fulfilling minutes, is all.

They come to an abrupt end with the piercing, offended caw of his dear, beloved hippogriff.

"Fluthlu's many dicks, your son of a bitch tried to bite a chunk out of Crow!"

He disentangles himself in a hurry. It helps (sort of) that Karkat shoves him off with a great annoyed snort.

"Your stupid birdbrain keeps trying to peck him!" Karkat grumps as he goes to the drake and tries to lead him off. He needs to slap him over the snout for Slick to take a single step back.

Dave caresses Crow's beak gently and looks superior when she preens his fringe. Drakes are stupid and mean and that's the pure truth. Give him a hippogriff any day of the week.

"Maybe if you stopped trying to make up for his rotten self by rubbing him until his scales get all shiny, it's not my baby's fault, okay?"

"She's not _actually_ a crow!" Karkat yells back over his shoulder as he heaves at Slick's chest. "The shiny is not an excuse!" The drake opens his jaws the way true dragons do when they want to spit fire, but fire is an ability that most drakes don't have any longer and thank fuck for that or Dave might well be a widower by now. Disgruntled by his inability to incinerate his master, Slick snorts and lets himself be tied to another, farther tree.

Satisfied, Dave smoothes down some feathers, and hopes strongly that they'll be able to go back to cuddling before the fire and possibly blowjobs very soon.

"--What the f-- she has a fucking bald spot! Your hellbeast gave her a bald spot!"

"Hey! My drake is not a hellbeast, go fuck yourself on your sword"

"Excuse you, I'm the one whose state religion worships the horrorterrors, I know from hellbeasts, okay? Look at that asshole, he still has feathers right at the corner of his maw!"

They pause to stare at each other. Dave is frowning, more bewildered than truly angry.

He still has a chubby, but it's fading fast. Augh. "Weren't we trying to consummate our vows. Like, again."

"I don't know about you," Karkat replies drolly, "But personally I was trying to blow you."

Dave pinches his lips really tight. He's still leaning against Crow's fluffy orange chest.

"Cool. You up for angry sex?"

Karkat starts laughing. Dave follows him in the next second.

They meet by the fire and sink back down onto their abandoned cloaks, but all the urgency is gone and they keep breaking into random bouts of chuckling.

"Reconciliation buggering?"

"I'm game."

Karkat's legs are in the air and Dave is attempting to aim when Crow, having untied herself from her tree, wanders up to them and preens Dave's hair until his boner is only a faraway, hilarious memory.


	4. Page of Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous said: By the Letter (of the law), five years later
> 
> … goddamn you, you’ve landed me with the start of a new arc. *shakes fist powerlessly* I DID NOT NEED THIS PLOT. fairly possible there'll be more after this one, but who knows.

They don't really bother with court much. Karkat didn't enjoy Prospit's court already; Derse's makes him twice as happy that he's got disputes to slap down, speeches of friendship and country-wide news to deliver, and town-to-town enmities to mediate and scratch his ashen itch on. Even if he hated his current life he would hate it less than Derse's court.

The Empresses requested their presence, though, and he's good at hating things he's got to deal with anyways.

Case in point. "Dave I swear to all that is holy if you molest my gloves again I will _slap you in the face with them_."

"Huh."

"In a really not sexy way."

"Aw."

Karkat clears his throat and looks away from Dave's pouting lips. "You made us late enough with the boots, let's go already." He can still feel Dave's warm hands "helping you tuck your pants in those stupid boots properly' all over his thighs.

He tucks Dave's arm in his and hauls him out of the door.

"Do you even like that kind of pain?" he grumbles -- quietly so the servants won't catch that they're discussing their sex life in public corridors once again.

"Face-slapping? Eh." Dave purses his lips. Karkat tears his eyes away. "I'd totally tolerate it if it made your clothes fall back off. They're so pretty, they'd probably make you look twice as good naked."

Karkat rolls his eyes, and vows to work twice as hard not to let on that the stupidly fancy court clothes Dave's brother sent them to wear are stiff and scratchy and ridiculously attention-grabbing, and make him miss his traveling leathers already. The lengths one will go to in order to please their matesprit, seriously.

\--

Fifteen minutes later he's thinking his clothes are actually fairly subdued, and maybe he _should_ thank Dirk. "I don't think we even wore that much lace and ribbons at our _wedding_ ," he whispers to Dave as he watches an older human swan by. He can't even tell if that's supposed to be a male or female human, and usually the dress styles are fairly distinct.

Not that the trolls in attendance are much better. Fancy attire is one human sin that trolls have been eager to roast for ever since the first Great War cooled down enough to allow for trade.

A half-hour later he's parked in a corner with a pitcher of wine and he doesn't intend to move again until his feet feel less bruised, and he watches Dave navigate the ebb and flow of the crowd. It's ridiculous how well he fakes it, reminds Karkat that if his recent human ancestors hadn't been destroyed by her Imperious Condescension that today he would be a prince.

A half-hour and five minutes in, Dave strolls back to him casually and goes, "Welp, we're gonna have to plunge in the eye of the storm to get Dirk or Rose."

He steals Karkat's drink. Karkat allows it, on probation. At worst it'll be something to yell at him over if his reason doesn't satisfy Karkat.

"Talked to like twenty people and five of them sounded me out on divorcing you and reestablishing a true and pureblooded human royal line. One of them even had a daughter with childbearing hips all ready to go."

... Yeah okay Karkat is satisfied.

Okay, not _satisfied_ -satisfied, because that is one steaming pile of drake shit if he's ever seen one, but he supposes Dave can have the glass. Karkat gets a swallow from the pitcher.

The way he understands it -- he doesn't understand very much, it's mostly by rote -- Dirk is first in line, then Roxy, then Rose and Dave. Rose is a High Priestess of the Church of Horrorterrors, and her calling as a seer supersedes everything, so unless they all croak she's out of the way entirely. Roxy, if Karkat remembers right, the one thing trolls do better than humans about ruling is they don't care if you're a man or a woman. Fair bet that if they reestablish purely human laws she'll get saddled with a husband to do the ruling for her, and the only way they'd think that works is if they think she's really as silly as she acts like.

So basically someone is planning on fucking up their hard-earned peace and invalidating the months and months of peace talks Karkat had to sit his ass through -- and on bypassing Dirk entirely.

He almost doesn't take Dave's arm again because he wants to be free to swing. But you don't fight much at court, and when you do it's well-organized duels with referees and whatever the fuck else, so he lets Dave tuck his hand in his elbow again.

Dave doesn't even smile his tiny, secretive smile when people double-take at his apparently ladylike behavior, which irritates Karkat even worse even though he doesn't even get why his matesprit finds it funny in a first place.

He elbows a couple of fancy useless courtiers out of his way, signals sharp and impatient at Dirk's secretary, who scowls back at him from his ridiculous blueblooded height, but then booms out, "Make way for David Lalonde-Strider-Vantas, Duke of Lohac, Prince of the Blood, and Lord Karkat Vantas-Strider, Baron Lopah."

Karkat has never even _been_ to Lopah. Stupid courtesy titles. But they have bigger fish to fry at the moment.

They walk up to Dirk, who is seated in the middle of a horseshoe-shaped couch. He nods at them, flicks his fingers to chase people off . "Little brother."

Dave bows shallowly. "Big brother." He moves in for a hug, which is funny because in private none of Dave's family touch if they can help it, apart from Roxy. When Dave is done Karkat bows in turn and sits where he's invited to sit, and tries to look like he's doing nothing more challenging or aneurysm-inducing than socializing.

"How are you two doing? Got enough of gallivanting, ready to come back home?"

"I will never be ready," Dave replies, and goes loose all over the couch, a smirk on his face like he just told a very funny joke. "By the way we've been hearing hella things. Especially me, "cause funny enough they wouldn't tell them around the wife."

Dirk's face doesn't change at all, bland and almost bored. "Divorcing Karkat, remarrying human?"

"Figures you already knew," Karkat grumbles.

Dirk flicks his hand like he's scaring off a fly, lazily. His eyes are narrow like blades behind his smoked-glass spectacles. "Yeah, that's the part of the conspiracy that's getting cold feet over the actual plan. Don't worry, they'll forget about the two of you the second you're off for the mountains again. This is mostly a crime of opportunity."

He goes silent. Dave resists all of three seconds before he's stretching his legs and accidentally on purpose kicking Dirk. (Karkat resisted longer because he's on Dave's other side and couldn't have reached. Also, five years in and he still doesn't know Dirk well enough to be on kicking terms with him. Not that it would stop him if they weren't in public.)

"Main part of the conspiracy, please, Dirk?"

Dirk blows air through his nose, sneaks his brother an annoyed look. "You'll be gone again in three days and we handle this kind of stupid every other week around here. You don't need to come wading into it with those light-footed and elegant war boots."

"I don't need to stuff my war boot up your princely asshole either," Karkat muses, and even remembers to try to look casual, "and yet I'm probably still going to end up doing it. Ah, the sacrifices we make for human family."

Dirk narrows his eyes at him some more, and then looks away into the crowd, like he saw something... some kind of shift. His secretary -- what's his name, Zakahr, Zahhak -- leans in and whispers in his ear, and his jaw clenches.

"Well. The main part--"

"All rise for His Royal Highness, Prince Harold Strider-Lalonde, Prince of the Blood!"

Karkat rises without thinking too much, and then realizes that Dave didn't follow him up, that he's still seated beside Dirk, and that his eyes have gone wide with shock.

The Strider-Lalondes are Dave's family, but human families are kind of sprawling and confusingly weird and it takes Karkat a second to remember that thanks to the Condesce's vigorous trimming of their family bush those four are pretty much it.

Dirk goes, "There's my cue" and gets up, signals them to stay behind, opens himself a path toward the co-Empresses' dais. In the crowd another path is opening, several older men trailing a smaller, ash-blond human that Karkat cannot see in full due to so many stupid people in the way until he climbs up two steps and makes his bow to her Imperial Highnesses.

He looks like Dirk probably looked at six sweeps. Hell, if Dirk didn't look like this at six sweeps then he looks more like Dirk than even Dirk himself.

"What the fuck," Karkat says, and turns to Dave to see if he's got an explanation, but from the furrow between his eyebrows and the parted lips Dave is just as thrown as he was.

"No fucks involved, I'm afraid," Rose says from behind the couch, and makes them both jump a couple of inches off the cushions.

Dave is quick to turn this into a hug that ends up yanking her over the back of the couch, and she yelps.

"Dave, the crowd!"

"They're all watching that imposter," Karkat says, dodging to avoid being knocked in the horn by her slipper. "No one's watching you."

"Plus everyone knows we're cow-loving hick wannabes with no manners," Dave continues, and sets her between the two of them. Karkat nods a hello at Rose and cranes his neck to see the whole thing on the imperial dais. The kid is chatting up Empress Meenah with that little asshole smirk on his face that Dirk and Dave both show at their most smarmy. Looks even more obnoxious on a brat who doesn't look like he's even quite of an age to have filled his first bucket.

"Where'd the kid come from?"

Rose gestures lazily, an aimless twitch of her fingers. Black-purple flickers briefly around the three of them. "There, no more lip readers. The official story is that he's Dirk's natural son, and thanks to various political reforms that we've done recently to bring in line trollish and human inheritance the natural part doesn't matter as much as it used to -- for now."

Karkat blinks. "Natural son?"

"His parents weren't married," Dave goes, oddly terse. "One problem with that, Dirk is strictly dick only. And if he'd fricked with a lady--"

"He'd have made damn sure to check if there was any issue. Mmh." Rose frowns pensively at the dais as Dirk is allowed to climb in turn and the two meet. They seem to size each other up for a second, and then Dirk -- it's hard to say, he's got his back on them, but the kid looks briefly surprised. Maybe Dirk said something nice. They nod their heads at each other. "Dirk will detach him from his retinue and bring him back here pretty fast, so the highlights -- pressures means he will be forced to recognize him as his true heir. That might bring us some influence on the child himself -- might not. He's pretty deep into their plot, was probably raised in it. But he's sharp -- like Dirk."

"How much like Dirk?" Dave asks, voice cracking in a way Karkat doesn't quite recognize.

Rose doesn't answer. Karkat, watching the two of them walk back through the crowd, goes "Probably enough to wonder if there was any other parent thrown into the genetic mix at all."

They walk the same way, only Harold is still gangly, still fronting to look bigger; his swagger doesn't look as natural. They have the same kinks in their hair, the same regal nose. Same everything, apart from what can be accounted by Harold's youth.

The most telling is their expressions, though.

Harold smiles like Dirk would smile if he were evil. ... Well, more evil than he is. Karkat shakes his head. That's an Ancestor and Descendent pair alright.

Harold blinks when they cross the hazy barrier Rose set up, though Dirk doesn't. Dirk sits back down, casual, waves his hand at the three of them.

"My sister, Rose Lalonde." Rose gets up to sketch a little bow, sits back down between Dave and Dirk. "And my youngest brother, David Strider, and his husband Karkat Vantas. I'm sure you've been briefed -- even on them."

Harold stares down at the two them for a second, and then looks away like they're too boring to be worth all of his attention. (The little asshole.) "I have. Uncle David ... _uncle_ Karkat. A pleasure."

"And this is Harold --"

A pleasant smile. "Hal, please--"

"--An eldritch creation from Old Scratch's workshop."

The kid's face turns to stone, or perhaps steel, not for real but in such a way that Karkat wants to reach out and touch his face to make sure the flesh still gives.

So. They've fabricated Dirk an heir. Next stop will be to get rid of the Empresses -- or would they get rid of Dirk first, and then have Hal lift his banner in rebellion?

"Please do sit down," Rose says pleasantly, like Dirk didn't just throw a slap in that kid's face he should still be reeling from a year hence.

Then again, he's Dirk's get, because he does sit, his face carved in marble.

"Am I correct in assuming," he says, all precise and sharp and so _young_ , "that this spell disrupts understanding of what is said in here -- whether the interloper uses sound or sight?"

She nods. "They won't even be able to parse our body language. Feel free to cut loose."

"Very well." A dueler's nod.

He's so scrawny under the lace. He'll grow up tall, he is tall for his age already, but he's nowhere near that yet.

"You planning to recognize him?" Karkat asks Dirk, cutting off whatever Hal was planning to counterattack with. (No doubt something serrated, viper-mean. Not that vipers are mean animals, but when they bite, you feel it long after.) "If you say, here's my offspring--"

"Karkat, I appreciate your help but--"

"No you fucking don't, but you're going to. Pros and cons, now, chop chop -- Hal, Dave, shut your blathertraps."

Everyone is looking at him like they've never met him before and are wondering how this grizzly bear stuffed himself into such a fancy doublet, apart from Dave who looks half resigned, half about to burst out laughing. Karkat spares him a ghost of a smile.

"If I say, here's my offspring," Dirk repeats slowly, unimpressed.

Karkat has stared down brigands and highbloods with swords at his neck; he only arches his eyebrow pointedly. Dirk gives with a little huff.

"We gain a little time. They won't want to rock the boat and will advance their plans in secret. We gain some measure of control on him -- officially, at least, but they probably already set up some means of sending him his orders."

" _I'm_ the one who sends orders," Hal says frostily. Dirk snorts.

"That you think. Cons, we're welcoming him into a prime position for spying, plus making the next step of their plan that much easier. Pros and cons of ousting him as a homunculus and a fraud -- pros, we're cutting them off at the knees."

"Cons, you can't _prove_ it," Hal hisses, "and wouldn't it look so cheap and small-minded that a prince would go so far as to concoct such a ridiculous story to avoid acknowledging he has a son. Such a nice little scandal." He sneers, teeth bared. He hates Dirk with everything he is, it's obvious down to the core of him. "You know the Throne of Heart would acknowledge me. I'm as human as you are, and as pure-blooded as you are, and nothing will ever prove I'm not."

"So you're human now?" Karkat asks. The idleness in his voice throws Hal, he can see that in his blink. "No matter how you were made, you're human now, you're not going to fall to dust the second someone crushes a stone of power or pours holy water on you?"

"Maybe Oglogoth's Drool," Rose muses, "but then again, who wouldn't."

Karkat glowers at her. She puts her hands on her knees primly and smiles.

Hal's jaw is clenched so hard Karkat is surprised his teeth don't crack. "Wouldn't that be convenient. No. You'll have to stab me in the old-fashioned heart, I'm afraid."

He lifts his chin in defiance, as if he's daring them to get rid of him now, since he knows they'll do it sooner or later.

Dirk's eyes are cold like he's already decided when.

"You realize that by troll custom, he's your descendant, right?" Karkat comments. "He might not be your son, but he's pretty much genetically identical to you. Which makes him closer than if he were half someone else, not farther away. Even if you proved you didn't breed with a woman for him, he could still make a claim to your holdings by way of troll law. Since the Empresses have conveniently been having you all work on that."

Hal stares at him like he can't figure out why Karkat is helping, if he's helping at all. No, surely not, there must be a trap. Ah, that stupid kid.

"Recognize him," Karkat says, and takes Dave's hand as apology for what he's going to say next. "Make him your heir."

Hal has gone stiff all over, his eyes a touch too wide; his hand twitches toward that hidden knife he thinks no one else has noticed.

"And then lend him to us as a page, because I really could do with someone else to feed the goddamn pack horses. Lord knows if I never have to juggle the pack horses and Slick at the same fucking time it'll be too soon." He turns to Hal. "You've got a riding horse of your own? No? We'll get you one, there's plenty in the stables and no one ever works them enough, it's a travesty."

"What," Dirk says, "the _hell_ , Vantas."

Karkat arches an eyebrow back at him. "I don't know about you, but killing off brats who haven't even wrung a single drop of spunk from their shame globes tends to look pretty bad to the normal folk. You give him to us, he's out of your hair while you deal with the rest of them, and with a little luck when we introduce him to the wide world outside highblood conspiracy it'll even spark something like a soul in him."

"Fuck you," Hal _snarls_. Karkat smiles as genially as he knows how. (Not very, but when it irritates people he can approximate.)

"Flattered, kid, but I'm spoken for."

Hal's shoulders have gone all straight and he drops his voice low, threatening as a six-sweeps old can be. "If you think I'm going to let you bundle me off to some mirthforsaken patch of wilderness and shove me off a cliff, you've got another think coming."

Karkat paps him right on the hawk nose.

"Shh. We have horses. Also a drake and a hippogriff. Dave will let you ride the hippogriff if you're good. She flies, if you're not afraid of heights I guess it's pretty alright."

Dave shakes his head and goes loose against Karkat's shoulder, which Karkat knows is acceptance, is love. "Dude, I don't even let you ride the hippogriff. No one rides the hippogriff. Nope. Not happening. Rose could put her saintly buttocks on Crow's saddle and I would tell Crow to bite the shit out of her, and I actually like the broad some days."

Karkat snorts at him, smiles. Yeah, right. Uh huh. Love you too. "Alternately in a couple of years you can apply for a war mount of your own."

"I am not fucking going with you!" Hal snaps back, and jumps to his feet, which even Rose's spell probably won't compensate for. And then he storms off through the shocked crowd, which definitely launches the meowbeast out of the swinging bag at high velocity.

The whole ballroom explodes into frantic whispers.

Dirk stares at the both of them for what seems a century, and then he starts smiling his thin, mildly evil smile. "I can have him bundled up and ready to go by tomorrow morning," he says, and swings up on his feet like he's made of silk and snakes.

"Six sharp!" Karkat calls after him. "Some of the horses will be out after that."

Dirk waves over his shoulder without looking back. Rose watches him go primly, and then snort-laughs into her hand.

"Did you just demand to foster a child? You lusus you."

She's too far for him to shove her, so Karkat just rolls his eyes. "Oh my swordfucking hellgod, shut up, I'm not lususing anything, do I look like a pale douche in opaque eyewear to you."

Dave pouts at him, which is so far from him being honestly irritated at Karkat's high-handed wigglernapping it's almost getting close to wanting to kiss Karkat for it. "My eyewear is not opaque, I demand reparation for this totally untrue slur."

Karkat leans in, forehead to forehead, and prepares a devastating comeback in lieu of tongue action.

"You realize you will never have a moment alone to have intercourse ever again," Rose says innocently.

"... Fuck." Karkat looks at Dave. "He's old enough to know to wander off for a couple hours in the woods without getting eaten, right? ... After we teach him some woodcraft?"

Dave stares at him for a couple of unbelieving seconds, shakes his head. "Hubby-dearest, darling, sweetmeat of my life. He's a pissy teenager who hates your guts. What do you think."

"Aw, fuck." Karkat slumps over the couch, glares at the ornate ceiling. "I guess we have to make the most use out of tonight's suite, then."

"Fuck yesss," Dave goes. "Five years in and I'm finally gonna get fricked on gold-threaded coverlets."

"Mind you don't get your hair caught in the embroidery," Rose says philosophically.


End file.
